


(How Long 'Til We Learn) Dancing is Dangerous

by kaycares



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 10:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5159948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaycares/pseuds/kaycares
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or The One where Lydia and Parrish Take a Road Trip </p><p>The morning Jordan Parrish leaves Beacon Hills, the sunrise is still a few hours off when he zips his duffle and locks the door behind him. He doesn't expect to find her waiting in the passenger's seat when he opens the door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(How Long 'Til We Learn) Dancing is Dangerous

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fall Harvest Community](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Fall+Harvest+Community).



> This is set post-5Aish and is my attempt at a Marrish road trip (of sorts). I hope you enjoy! :)

The morning Jordan Parrish leaves Beacon Hills, the sunrise is still a few hours off when he zips his duffle and locks the door behind him. He leaves a note on the kitchen counter for Lydia, who will come looking for him, because he finally caved and let Boots inside after weeks of listening to that goddamned cat cry on the fire escape. There’s a second note on Stilinski’s desk back at the station, thanking him for a) talking Parrish out of his two weeks’ notice and b) allowing him to start this open-ended leave of absence immediately. He doesn’t give either of them a reason because he doesn’t know how to explain in words the itch that settled beneath his skin shortly after the zombie pack was laid back to rest. He felt crazy enough when he stood before the Sheriff and requested a foot patrol for the first time in his life to combat that restless feeling. He can picture Lydia’s worried expression before he tries to explain to her that it feels like his skin doesn’t fit anymore, so he doesn’t tell her. He just leaves. 

He doesn’t expect to find her waiting in the passenger’s seat when he opens the door to dump his duffle there. 

“You would think a cop would know better than to leave his car unlocked,” she says in way of greeting. The corner of her mouth is turned up in a smirk, and she leans towards the open door like a magnet. 

It’s that magnetic field he’s trying to leave behind. He stands there for nearly a minute before he finally manages to ask, “What are you doing here?” 

“I’m going with you.” She settles back against the seat, almost like she can sense his argument before it’s even fully formed. “Which you don’t make easy, for the record. What happened to two weeks’ notice?” 

“The Sheriff talked me out of it,” he says automatically. Because Lydia has always had some kind of power over him, making him spill to her without a second thought. As soon as the words have left his mouth, he shakes his head, like the hold she has on him is something he can physically clear away. “You’re not going with me, Lydia.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because you’re still recovering.” 

The playful smirk she greeted him with disappears as she squares her shoulders. “I’m fine.” 

Parrish suppresses a groan as he rests his forehead against the open door, suddenly feeling exhausted. It’s been weeks since Scott and his slowly healing pack freed Lydia from her Eichen House prison, and she’s carefully crafted this history where Theo’s manipulation and her mother’s decision to institutionalize her never happened. She’s spent every day of those past few weeks proving over and over again that she’s fine. He hasn’t bothered to tell her he didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Stiles texted him to let him know she was out. 

“Okay,” he relents now. “You’re fine. But you’re still not going. You’re in _high school_.” 

“I have _one_ class which I’m finishing online,” she says, his comment forgotten as she slips back into that easy confidence. “My psychologist wrote a note saying I’m not ready to handle the stress of that environment yet.” 

He sighs as he lifts his head, staring at some spot on the horizon instead of looking back at her. There’s only one argument left in his arsenal, and he can’t find the words to say _but you’re 18_. But she _is_ 18, and he likes his position as deputy. And she has that scar just above her hipbone now, still red and raised beneath his fingers when he had tried to help her regain her strength after her self-induced hunger strike in Eichen House. He memorized the way her eyelashes flutter against her cheek when she dreams during that week she slept on his couch. And he hasn’t forgotten the way she yanked her hand away from his in the hours after Theo’s pack’s demise, when he had leaned in to kiss her. She’s 18, and she thinks he’s as evil as he feels. He just needs to escape her magnetic energy. 

With a second sigh, he looks back down to her. “You don’t even know where I’m going.” 

“Do _you_ know where you’re going?” 

Parrish straightens, pulling the door a little wider. His patience is gone now that he’s left with no arguments and no answers. “Okay, Lydia. C’mon. Out.” 

“It’s calling you, isn’t it?” she says without moving out of the car. “You can’t ignore it. You’ve tried, but it’s driving you crazy. You _have_ to follow it.” 

He cocks his head to the side, quizzical. “Do you hear it too?” he asks, a little more hopeful than he thinks he should be. 

Lydia shakes her head. “Not now. But if I come with you, I might be able to hear it first. Before it’s too late.” 

He fights the urge to groan at the soundness of her logic. Because who is he to look her in the eye and tell her he’s not interested in saving the people who will become the bodies he hides? “Call your mom,” he tells her instead before easing her door closed. “A cop doesn’t need to be arrested for kidnapping.” 

\----- 

The white noise in the back of his head stops just outside of Seattle. His skin doesn’t feel so tight. His foot doesn’t bounce against the floor mat. For the first time in weeks, he feels like he can breathe. It’s not until he’s pulling into the parking lot of the motel that he realizes this was how it felt to arrive in Beacon Hills a few months back. 

Figuring out why he’s there is another story. Lydia contacts Scott’s pack, but no one knows much about the supernatural situation up north. She texts Derek Hale, too, who shares the name of two wolf packs, but doesn’t give much in way of an explanation for why Parrish feels so drawn to this spot. Before he knows it, four days have come and gone, and he still has no idea why he’s there. 

On the fifth day, the constant Seattle rain breaks in the middle of the afternoon, and Lydia nearly drags him out the door. “We need a change of scenery,” she says as she pulls the door closed behind her, then wrinkles her nose at it. “This is why you don’t stay in a motel with a weekly rate.” 

“We’re staying here because no one notices if you come and go in the middle of the night. It’s convenient.” 

“Right. _Convenient_ ,” she says, making a face like the word tastes bad in her mouth. “It’s convenient when the body’s in the room next door, too.” 

He groans as he spins back around to face her beside the car. “Lydia, if there was a body in the room next door, we wouldn’t still be here. Just give me some time. I’m trying to figure it out.” 

“I know,” she sighs in a way that sounds more like _I’m sorry_. “So let’s try a change of scenery.” 

A change of scenery does help when Lydia suggests a run through the forest preserve a few miles back. At least, it makes him feel like himself again - more human and less a monster. He stops thinking in favor of focusing on the pounding of his feet against the trail, the racing of his heart in his chest. When she sprints ahead of him to initiate a playful race, he doesn’t second guess himself as he joins in. 

“Well?” she asks breathlessly, hands on her knees, after they’ve double backed and found the car again. 

He shakes his head as he fights to catch his own breath. “But it was worth a try,” he offers with a smile, feeling less defeated than he probably should. And then he makes the mistake of reaching out and pressing his hand to the back of her neck, exposed now that her ponytail has fallen forward over her shoulder. Lydia yanks herself away in record time. 

“What about before?” she tries to cover quickly. “When you got to Beacon Hills? How’d you find them? The bodies?” 

He remembers meeting her. A shock, like static electricity the first time her arm brushed against his own. The way he could sense her from the minute she walked into the room, like knowing a TV’s been left on. Dreams that would make him blush for weeks afterwards whenever she caught his eye. And somewhere in there, the bodies, beginning to appear on other nights only after she had appeared first. But his cheeks are still burning with the shame of watching her pull away. 

He shakes his head instead as he says, “I don’t know.”

\---- 

He dreams of the preserve that night. Of being back in the clearing where he had caught her wrist and told her they should turn back around. But it’s her hand that catches his wrist this time, lighting a fire on his skin that spreads from his wrist to his cheeks when she takes his face in her hands. 

“Think, Jordan,” she says. “ _Think_.” 

“No one calls me Jordan,” he replies, sounding dazed and distracted in his own ears. But it’s true. For as long as he can remember, in every area of his life, he’s been - 

“Just think,” she sighs. She leans in until her forehead is pressed against his, and all he can think about is how much he wants to hear her say his name again until her lips are suddenly against his own. And that’s when he sees it - A body, tiny wings, fresh springs tucked away somewhere. 

He wakes up with a start to the smell of smoke still thick in his nose and a trail of muddy footprints leading from the door of the motel room to the shower. (Seattle rain is something neither of them is used to after almost a week). It’s another three days before Lydia helps him piece together that they’re human bodies, former victims of faeries, that he’s disposing of in some kind of magical spring, but at least he has a purpose again. He doesn’t let himself think about how _right_ it feels. 

\-----

They've barely been there long enough to unpack when he finds himself pacing in the middle of the night and dreaming about places with too much desert to be Seattle. 

“It's back, isn't it?” she asks him one morning after he's doubled their (still new) morning run. When he doesn't even try to deny it, she sighs and it almost sounds like relief. “I pick the next hotel.”

 _She_ finds the body on their first night after he wakes up to her pounding on the door adjoining their rooms. An hour later, she’s led him to a body with a gunshot wound to the chest, just below a perfect half moon of teeth marks on his shoulder. He stays rooted to his spot beside her even when her scream brings her to her knees. 

After the third body in as many days, there’s a gentler knock on his door in the middle of the night. Without invitation, Lydia moves past him and curls up on the other half of his bed.  
“They were suicides,” is the first thing she says after he’s stood beside the bed for a significantly awkward period of time before finally laying back down beside her. 

“I know.”

“It hurts worse.” She curls a little more tightly around herself, and he can see the way her shoulders tremble in the light the moon casts over her back. “It’s louder.” 

He doesn’t know much about her banshee abilities, besides the fact that unlike him, she can sometimes feel something before it happens while he can only clean up the mess afterwards. This time spent with her has made him more observant, though. He received a crash course education in the supernatural in the months she devoted to helping him figure out just what he is, and now at least he feels like he’s putting it to good use. “It’s the bite, isn’t it?” he asks when she doesn’t volunteer any more information. 

She nods, strawberry blonde curls brushing against her pillow. He starts to think she might have fallen asleep when her silence stretches on, and then suddenly, she flips over, staring at him with the kind of sadness that aches in his chest. “What do you know about the Argents?” 

He lays awake with her while she tells him about fates worse than carjackings and family oaths that span centuries. About other wolves’ victims and the holes they leave behind in the survivors’ lives. About a girl who was her best friend, a girl he barely knew before tonight. He hangs on her every word until she can’t ignore the voice in her head, signaling the arrival of another body. 

“We’re doing the right thing,” she tells him as he just beginning to hear that voice in the back of his own mind. She reaches across the space between them, taking his hand and giving it a small squeeze. 

Parrish can’t help but feel like all they’re doing is covering it up.

\---- 

They fall into a routine together. Lydia calls Derek to inform him of the pack responsible for the string of suicides, and after that, the itch to keep moving returns. They take turns picking where they stop, where they spend the night, what they listen to on the long stretches of driving between the places calling their names. They take turns finding the bodies, too. They get better at it, quicker. Sometimes, they can contact Scott’s pack and vanquish the threat before the body count has a chance to rise. 

They stop staying in separate rooms somewhere in the middle. 

At a tiny gas station in New Mexico, he asks the attendant questions about the area in perfect Spanish and is met by Lydia’s raised eyebrow when he gets back into the car. 

“I was stationed at a base in El Paso for a while,” he says with a shrug of his shoulder as he starts the car. “What about you?” 

“What about me?” she asks with a playful smile. “Was I stationed in El Paso?” 

Parrish rolls his eyes. “Do you speak any other languages?” 

“French. I spent a summer in Paris with my dad.” She sighs as she sinks back against her seat. Her head is tilted towards the window, eyes hidden behind big sunglasses. “That was back when he still felt guilty about the divorce.” There’s a beat of comfortable silence before he catches her turn her head out of the corner of his eye, the weight of her gaze now on him. “What about your family? We’ve been doing this for weeks, and I don’t even know where you’re from.” 

“Chicago,” he volunteers without hesitation because she’s right. He’s been living in the same room as her for almost a month, and his knowledge about her is still limited. “I’m one of six - two brothers and three sisters. My dad died when I was a sophomore in high school.” His eyes are on the road at this point, but she makes a sound in the back of her throat, soft and sympathetic, that he’s grown almost immune to over the years. He stops only long enough to give a half shrug and then continues on. “He was military, so I enlisted when I was 18.” 

Lydia is silent when he stops, and he can’t read her expression where it’s hidden behind her sunglasses. It’s thirty seconds too long for him when he starts to feel like he might’ve just bared too much of his soul. 

“So,” she begins when she finally speaks again. “Your family’s the _Brady Bunch_?” 

It becomes a game they play in between destinations when she’s not furiously texting Stiles or taking notes over the phone from Derek about whatever threat they’ve been drawn to. He tells her about his family, about growing up in a big city, about his first days on the force in Beacon Hills when he made enough mistakes to deserve to be fired a hundred times over. She tells him about Christmases spent in exotic places without decorating trees, her dad’s new family that she’s never actually met, and that one time Scott and Stiles thought she was a werewolf - and then a kanima. Sometimes, he’ll tell her about the time he spent overseas, realizing only in retrospect that he had felt drawn there, too. Sometimes, she tells him about what it feels like to constantly hear other people’s cries in your own head. 

He learns that when she’s hungry enough, Twizzlers are her convenience store food of choice. That she has a thing _against_ his love of Tom Petty and 80’s Ballads, but she sings along to Billy Joel every time. That she has an affinity for nightgowns, impossibly short ones that he has a hard time ignoring when they’re sharing hotel rooms and motel rooms but never a bed. And that sometimes, she’s not sure if she’s really one of the good guys either. 

In conversations over long stretches of highway, he starts to piece together the puzzle that is sometimes Lydia Martin. Before he knows it, he’s in way too deep. 

\---- 

After the faeries and the string of suicides, there’s the aftermath left behind by a family of wendigos. He covers up as many supernatural deaths in a matter of weeks as he does in the entire time he’s spent in Beacon Hills. And then, he just needs a break.

That itch is back beneath his skin, and his foot has started to bounce against the floormat, but he still stops when they reach the coast. Lydia is bleary-eyed and only half awake as he turns the car off, staring out the window as she pushes herself back up in the passenger seat. “This is it?” she asks. 

He shakes his head with a tired sigh. “We need to do something that’s not about death.” 

For two days, they ignore their duties as harbingers of death. Instead, he drags her into the waves with him, kicking and laughing until she begins to complain of a cramp in her side. She insists on dinner beside the water that doesn’t come from a vending machine or a gas station. They both turn off their phones when Stiles texts them both a handful of times to check in on their progress towards their next destination. And when they return to their shared room that night, her cheeks still flushed from the wine she was never carded for, he leans in to kiss her without thinking twice. 

There’s a moment when her lips stay pressed against his own, warm and familiar in a way he hadn’t expected, and then suddenly she pulls away, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth. 

“Jordan…” 

“No, I’m sorry,” he says with a shake of his head, feeling his own face grown flushed with embarrassment. “I shouldn’t have.” 

“I can’t.” 

“It’s okay, Lydia. I get it.” In his mind, he routes the quickest way back to Beacon Hills from here. Because she’s 18 with a family and friends hundreds of miles away. Because she has enough death in her own life without him dragging her into his. 

But she shakes her head, reaching out to take his wrist. “No, you don’t,” she says, almost pleading with him to listen. Her grip around his wrist tightens until he can feel her nails leaving marks behind on his skin. “The last boy I kissed watched himself die every night for weeks.” 

Confusion immediately replaces shame. He knows about her relationship with Jackson and the time she spent with Aiden once his pack was more or less destroyed, but she’s never said anything about dreams. “What?” 

“I don’t get premonitions. But I think I pass them on.” 

Before he can stop himself, Parrish laughs. Lydia’s brow furrows in response. “That’s it?” he asks with another scoff. 

“Jordan -” she starts again, but he cuts her off with a shake of his head. 

“I already have dreams, Lydia.” He swallows hard, resisting the urge to take a step closer to her. “You’re usually there. And you usually tell me where to go. It’s like - like I _need_ it.” 

She starts to shake her head, but he closes the distance in between them, kissing her a second time. This time, she doesn’t pull away, kissing him back until they’re both left gasping for breath. He raises a hand to her cheek, running his thumb over her soft skin as he finally vocalizes what he’s been thinking for weeks. “I think I need you.” 

That night, he does dream, but not of his own death. Instead, he dreams of her soft, welcoming kisses, and her warm breath in his ear as she whispers the name of a place he’s never heard of, a town he never would have thought of on his own. 

He wakes up certain of where they’re headed next. 

\---- 

It turns out that witches are real, living amongst the Totos and Dorothys of Kansas. There’s a wolf pack in Michigan that’s familiar with the Hale name and vampires down south that are a far cry from the romanticized heroes in literature. 

It turns out they work better together, too. 

He lives with the call of the aftermath, and she struggles to pinpoint where the silent screams in her head originate from. But the Lydia in his dreams fills in the blanks with answers he can’t find on his own. The fourth time, with Stiles’s and Scott’s help from afar, they’re able to eliminate the next supernatural threat before anyone actually dies, leaving nothing to be covered up or swept under the rug. But it all feels bittersweet in a temporary kind of way. 

“Eventually, you’ll have to go home,” he says one night as he runs his hand through her hair. Her head rests against his chest, her body draped over his own so as much of her skin touches his as possible. He already feels certain she’ll visit him in his sleep tonight with new directions. 

Right now, she lifts her head, resting her chin on his chest. “So will you.” 

He’s quiet as he brushes her hair back behind her hair. He’s given this a lot of thought recently, when he’s not trying to find the next body. At night, he lays awake beside her, imagining the phone call where he tells Sheriff Stilinski he doesn’t think he’s coming back. It’s not that he can’t see himself back there again, living in his apartment with that goddamn cat, convincing Lydia to spend nights there on the weekend, reclaiming his place at the station. But it’ll only be a matter of time again before he’s needed somewhere else. “I think I have to do this. I don’t think I have a choice.” 

“Then I’ll go with you,” she says with finality, like maybe he isn’t the only one who’s given this some thought. “We work better together.” 

“But you have graduation.” 

“I’ll graduate regardless,” she corrects. “I don’t have to walk.” 

“But what about college?” he argues. 

“I can go to college anywhere.” He watches the moment it registers on her face that she knows this isn’t true, too. Her dream is Stanford. A law degree at a school within an hour’s drive from the schools the rest of the pack is currently considering. Lydia Martin would never be happy with anywhere. She pulls herself up so she’s sitting beside him, and he’s momentarily distracted by her naked torso. “We don’t have to stop,” she tries again. “No matter where I am, I can wait.” 

He used to imagine a future like this, back when he thought the military might be his career forever. He thought about leaving a girl behind for deployment, and he hated the thought then as much as he hates it now. “You know, hell hound means ‘demon of death,’” he reminds her, not for the first time. 

“It means ‘protector of the supernatural,’” she corrects him, reciting the second definition listed in the Bestiary. Before he can argue any farther, she kisses him again. 

There’s an unspoken agreement to table the conversation for tonight. 

\---- 

A week before Christmas, they’re suddenly back in the sunny state of California. The highway begins to grow familiar a little while before it finally sinks in where they’re headed. There’s a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as they approach Beacon Hills. It’s been a while since Lydia’s hometown needed a banshee or a hell hound. It can’t mean anything good if they’re needed again. 

Lydia grows quieter, too, folding and unfolding and then folding her hands again her lap. Tom Petty comes on the radio in the middle of her hour as DJ and she doesn’t even notice. When her phone begins to vibrate in her lap a few minutes later, they both jump at the sound. 

“Stiles?” she answers before the second ring. “What happened?” 

Parrish steals quick glances at her throughout the entirety of the short phone call, but her own responses are monosyllabic and sparse. “No. We’re coming back,” is the first complete sentence she says while her body language remains unreadable. 

When she eventually hangs, up she stares at the phone in her lap. The knot in his stomach grows a little tighter. “What?” he finally asks when she still hasn’t volunteered any answers and his mind has created a threat twice as big as Theo and his zombie pack once were. “What is it?” 

“Derek’s back in Beacon Hills,” she explains, meeting his gaze when he steals another glance in her direction. “Braeden’s pregnant.” 

He grows frustrated when she doesn’t explain what the threat is. He’s seen witches, vampires, and mermaids in the time he’s spent with her. He’s learned more about wendigos than he had ever wanted to know and encounter more wolf packs than he ever thought existed. But none of that explains why Derek is suddenly back with his girlfriend in tow. “So what’s wrong?” he tries again. 

“Nothing,” she replies with a shake of her head. “Stiles says the baby is a cub - half werewolf.” 

“But why are we going back there?” Parrish tries again, aware of the obvious note of frustration in his voice now. 

“Because you protect the supernatural.” She reaches across the console for his hand then, a small smile beginning to form on her lips. “There’s going to be a new beta in the pack. I think the pack needs you.” 

It’s a new way to look at this role he’s been given, one he hasn’t considered before. But he likes the way it sounds, being responsible for something other than hiding the evidence that these creatures were ever there to wreck havoc. 

“That sounds pretty permanent,” he says as he gives her hand a squeeze. 

“Good.” 

Already, a few miles from the town line, he can feel himself beginning to settle back into this form, drawn to the place where he’s needed, beside the girl he needs in return. And Lydia is right - it _does_ feel good. 

It just feels right.


End file.
